An Evening with Hank Green in London

Hello bookish friends! I am absolutely buzzing to write this post!! On Monday, Me, my boyfriend Ben, and my good friend Hannah all made our way to London to see the one and only Hank Green in Conversation with Holly Bourne. He was there to talk all about his fabulous book An Absolutely Remarkable Thing.

I love how Hank literally can’t promote his one book – he ran on stage carrying a copy of Holly Bourne’s new book Are We All and Lemmings and Snowflakes?and prominently displayed it in front of his own – What an actual treasure he is.

I’ve only ever seen Hank live once before, and that was in 2012, so it really felt like a treat to be sitting there as he made silly jokes, answered some pretty deep questions, and chatted all about his wonderful book. This was also post VidCon London so I can only assume that he was a piece tired.

Literally cannot get over that they used this picture. So infamous.

Holly asked some really interesting questions about his writing process, whether he though the internet is a fundamentally good or bad thing, and about the characters in the book. Of course there was also many a tangents and a lot of ridiculousness to go alongside that. I found out so many cool tidbits about the book, too.

Who knew that it was originally going to be a graphic novel?? THAT’S SO FREAKING COOL! I think the book would work so well as a graphic novel, and as a video game actually. Especially some of the dream sequences, like that fully lends itself to the video game world and I would fully play that game. Can this be a thing like right now because I would like to play it pls and thank you.

I also didn’t know that Hank had been writing this book since 2012?! That’s mad, and also makes me feel better about how long I’ve been working on the same story (lol). He also wrote some of it as part of Nanowrimo which made me very happy to hear, as Nanowrimo definitely has a special place in my heart. So much creativity can come out of one crazy busy month in November!

Holly also asked an interesting question – Does the fact that John has written successful books impact Hank’s writing process? This is super interesting, as I can only imagine that sort of thing would be all too easy to get into your head. Hank said that it’s more of a fear of not living up to John’s books, and the worry about other people comparing them, as opposed to Hank comparing them. Of course, if you’ve read Hank’s book, then you’ll quickly see that his writing style is VERY different to John’s, and he’s a fantastic writer in his own right.

I also loved something that Hank said about the writing process. When he was writing, it felt more like he was uncovering characters than creating them. This is such a nice way of describing what it feels like to write, as characters present themselves and show you who they are. UGH I LOVE WRITING AND BOOKS.

Honestly, it was just such a fun and interesting evening, and I hope that I can attend similar events in the future!

Did anyone else attend this event? Have you read An Absolutely Remarkable Thing? Come chat with me in the comments!